The use of wireless devices, such as cellular telephones, laptops, PDAs, and the like, has exploded over the last couple decades in both the consumer market as well as the business market. Generally, wireless devices include a transceiver and communicate with other transceivers using a variety of communication protocols. For example, WiFi networks are popular in homes and businesses and provide a user of a compatible wireless device wireless access to the Internet. WiFi networks are based on the IEEE 802.11 standard and provide short range connectivity. Many wireless devices are also compatible with one or more cellular networks to provide broader, longer range coverage. For example, many wireless devices communicate wirelessly to networks utilizing a Global Systems for Mobile Communications (“GSM”) or Code Division Multiple Access (“CDMA”) standard.
These communications standards used by wireless devices are constantly evolving to provide greater services, including new features as well as better service. For example, the current standard being developed by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (“3GPP”) is the Long Term Evolution (“LTE”) standard. LTE is often marketed in the United States as “4G” and is often the subject of marketing campaigns by service providers. LTE is designed to provide greater throughput and higher speeds for users as well as providing a simpler architecture resulting in lower operating costs for service providers. Three previous versions of LTE (Rel-8, Rel-9 and Rel-10) have already been standardized, and the 3GPP is now working on Rel-11.